Grey-white text popped up at the edge of his vision.
【Detection Target: ? (Eerie Transcendent) (Dangerous)】
【An eerie transcendent with extremely high compatibility. The pathway is related to the erasure of presence. The aura concentration is nearing the cognitive boundary.】
Lu Yuan’s heart suddenly quickened.
The gentle tone was entirely at odds with the aura radiating from the man.
The aura was so intense that goosebumps rose on his skin, and his body experienced a physical rejection reaction.
While it didn't quite reach the overwhelming pressure the Guardian had given him on the clock tower, his strength was likely above that of Kraus.
K’s right hand was already extended.
With fingers spread, his palm was aimed at the center of Lu Yuan’s back, his fingertips less than three inches from his spine. His fingers were pale and slender, looking very much like those of an ordinary student.
Lu Yuan was running at full speed under the state of Acceleration, yet to K, it was as if he weren't moving at all.
Just as K’s fingertips were about to touch his back...
Something opened behind Lu Yuan.
A pitch-black eye emerged from the shadows on Lu Yuan’s back. Its pupil was massive, nearly filling the entire socket, and it was so dark it seemed bottomless.
The eyeball swiveled, locking onto K.
K’s reaching hand froze in mid-air.
A smile still hung on the corners of his mouth, but his fingertips did not advance further.
That eyeball was not something that belonged to Lu Yuan.
It hovered behind Lu Yuan’s shoulder, its pitch-black pupil swaying loosely as it stared fixedly in K’s direction.
Lu Yuan had seen eyes like this on the clock tower—those things that bobbed within the Guardian’s pitch-black aura.
Lu Yuan understood instantly: the Guardian was watching.
K’s fingers moved.
He withdrew the palm aimed at Lu Yuan’s back, and with a flick of his wrist, he shifted his aim from Lu Yuan’s spine toward the wooden man tucked under his arm.
His fingers reached out to snatch the wooden construct wrapped in the coat with pinpoint precision and incredible speed.
“Hm?”
A voice drifted in from the distance.
It was old and low, consisting of only a single syllable, yet that one syllable ground over all the sounds on the battlefield, landing cleanly between Lu Yuan and K.
Lu Yuan recognized that voice.
It was the Guardian.
In the next moment, the hunched figure in the distance was no longer where he had been. No trace of movement could be seen; it was as if he had simply vanished.
Then, he appeared behind Lu Yuan.
A withered hand reached past Lu Yuan’s shoulder, covered in wrinkles and bulging veins. The bones beneath the skin were clearly visible, and the fingernails had a greyish-white tint.
That hand caught K’s wrist.
K’s fingers hung less than an inch from the wooden man, unable to touch it.
Lu Yuan could no longer move.
From the moment the Guardian appeared, everything in the entire area came to a standstill. The insect swarm froze, the sounds from the distant battlefield vanished, and even the air seemed to stick together, becoming so heavy it pinned everyone and everything—even the light—to the spot.
Lu Yuan’s eyes could still move. He saw K also frozen in place, the languid smile fixed on his face, his wrist held by the withered hand, his fingers suspended. The sharp aura he emitted was completely smothered by the Guardian’s pitch-black aura.
In this entire world, only the Guardian was moving.
Lu Yuan’s heart, which had been in his throat, finally settled. He was just a rank 2 Knowledge transcendent; he couldn't beat anyone. Life was truly hard.
The old man’s movements were incredibly slow—slow enough that Lu Yuan could see the curve of every wrinkle tightening on his fingers and the pulse of the veins beneath the skin as the withered knuckles closed.
He was slowly tightening his grip.
Pitch-black aura seeped from the old man’s shoulders, creeping inch by inch along his arm toward where he held K’s wrist. The black eyes within the aura all opened, floating densely within the black mist, every single one of them staring at K.
The eyeball that had emerged behind Lu Yuan sank back, dissolving into the shadows.
Grey-white text popped up at the edge of his vision.
【Sanity: -5... 66/140】
【Environmental Perception: High-risk pollution source detected. Please move away immediately!】
K’s mouth was moving.
But under the domain’s suppression, only his lips could move.
“Are you not afraid of death?”
The voice squeezed out of that frozen face, tinged with confusion and even a hint of sincerity.
The Guardian did not respond. The withered hand continued to tighten.
Only one thought remained in K’s mind.
The Guardian shouldn't be here, much less intervening. K had received clear information that the Guardian would not act.
The reason he dared to come and go as he pleased in the Polymath Tower and intercept a rank 2 at the edge of the insect swarm was because of that certainty.
But the old man’s withered hand was clamped onto his wrist. His flesh was withering, his bones were groaning, and his entire body felt as if it were about to fall apart.
K’s expression finally changed. The languid smile vanished, and his gaze turned cold.
In the next instant, his body violently collapsed.
Starting from the wrist being held, his entire being disintegrated. Skin, bone, and even the mud-stained deep grey robes simultaneously turned into a deep grey liquid, pouring through the gaps in the Guardian’s withered fingers and splashing onto the gravel ground.
The domain remained, and the air was still heavy enough to be solid, but K’s body had slipped out from that fifth-rank suppression. The liquid flowed rapidly across the ground, converging a few meters away.
Lu Yuan’s eyes followed the direction of the liquid.
He saw something that shouldn't have been there. As K’s liquid flowed over the ground, a faint ghostly blue light flickered in the gaps between the stone slabs, exactly the same color as the Bronze City inscriptions Jie had activated at the start of the battle.
The inscriptions were making way for K.
The liquid rose again a few meters away, coalescing from the ground. K’s form was restored to its original state in less than a second.
The Guardian looked down at his empty withered hand. The black eyes floating in the pitch-black aura had already turned toward the direction where K was about to appear the moment he disintegrated.
Just as K’s form fully coalesced, the Guardian was no longer where he stood.
Just like before, there was no trace of movement. The old man was simply gone, and then he appeared directly in front of K, less than an arm’s length away.
K recoiled half a step. His body, which had been reformed for less than a second, instinctively retreated, his languid and loose posture completely shattered.
The Guardian stood before him. His hunched frame was half a head shorter than K, but the pitch-black aura spilling from the old man’s shoulders shrouded K entirely in shadow.
The old man’s gaze fell upon K. Several of the black eyes floating in the aura shifted their gaze toward the ground—toward that faint, ghostly blue glow in the cracks between the stone slabs at K’s feet.
His raspy voice was very low.
“How are you borrowing the power of the Bronze City?”
K’s expression shifted once more.
The Guardian had seen through it. K’s ability to slip away from the fifth-rank domain wasn't due entirely to his own pathway; the power of the Bronze City’s inscriptions had blocked part of the domain’s suppression for him at that moment. The inscriptions were protecting him.
K did not answer.
The Guardian fell silent for a moment.
“Forget it,” the raspy voice said without emotion. “I will find out for myself.”
He extended his withered hand. Pitch-black aura erupted from his arm, and black eyes densely covered the surface of the aura, all of them open and staring at K.
The space around K began to solidify. Air pressed in on K’s body from all directions, its density multiplying several times over within a few breaths. The gravel beneath K’s feet was crushed, and tiny stone fragments hung motionless in mid-air.
The smile was completely gone from K’s face. At the moment the Guardian’s withered hand reached out, he clearly could no longer hold on.
“Guardian.”
K spoke with some difficulty as the spatial pressure continued to tighten, but his voice carried a hint of a tremor.
“Are you certain you want to kill me?”
He looked at the hunched old man before him.
“I can guarantee that your pathway will come to an absolute end.”
The Guardian’s expression did not change. His withered hand hung in the air, the pitch-black aura churning slowly around him.
His raspy voice was neither loud nor soft.
“You overestimate yourself and the group of things behind you.”
The Guardian no longer held back.
The moment his withered hand pushed forward, the pitch-black aura completely poured out of the old man’s body, its concentration so high it blocked out all light. Countless black eyes surged from the aura, packed so tightly there were no gaps, layering over every inch of the space around K. They surrounded him from head to toe, front to back, all open and staring at him.
K was pinned.
All the power was concentrated on him alone.
His body and his pathway were frozen simultaneously. Even the power within him that resonated with the Bronze City inscriptions was forcibly suppressed from the outside by the pitch-black aura.
In K’s vision, the world turned black and white.
Color was stripped from his surroundings. The stone slabs on the ground, the distant insect wall, and the residual light in the night sky all faded away, leaving only black and white.
The only things with color were those eyes, their pitch-black pupils exceptionally clear in the black-and-white world.
He was stripped of everything. He couldn't even send out the thought to liquefy. His pathway was frozen from the root, and every channel in his body related to transcendent power was solidified.
The Guardian walked over, step by step.
The old man’s hunched body moved slowly through the pitch-black aura, each step on the gravel making a faint crunching sound.
K watched him approach, unable to do anything.
He had tried liquefaction and slipping away, but all the methods he had used earlier had failed. The Bronze City inscriptions did not light up again; that faint ghostly blue glow was completely smothered by the pitch-black aura. Neither his body nor his pathway belonged to him anymore.
This was the fifth-rank.
Lu Yuan’s eyes could still move. He watched as the Guardian walked toward K step by step. The old man’s movements were slow, as if he weren't chasing someone who couldn't escape.
He seemed to be intentionally waiting for something.
The Guardian got what he was waiting for.
From the direction of the Polymath Tower, in the night sky, the Sea of Knowledge—which had remained silent throughout the entire battle—suddenly lit up.
Light exploded from the horizon as dreamlike colors cascaded down. Pure light radiated wildly as a beam of light pierced through the insect swarm, through the pitch-black aura, and through the Guardian’s domain, landing precisely on K’s position.
K, held within the Guardian’s withered hand, evaporated the instant the light touched him.
His body, his aura, and his presence all vanished in a heartbeat. Even the eyes within the pitch-black aura that were staring at him didn't have time to track him.
The withered hand was empty once again.
The Guardian did not move.
He stood where he was, looking up at the fading beam of light in the direction of the Polymath Tower, the pitch-black aura churning slowly around him.
He hadn't killed K. K had been taken away.
“So you really are involved...”
Rate on N.U.
